Writing in the Daily Telegraph in November 2003, Nigel Short claimed that "Tony was insanely jealous of my success, and his inability to accept that he was no longer Britain's number one was an indication of, if not a trigger for, his descent into madness."

This may be a reference to the board order issue at the 1986 Olympiad where Nigel considers he should have been board 1 above Tony and John Nunn. I've never really known who took the decisions about board order in those days. Was it the selectors, as claimed by Nigel, or would it have been the team captain in consultation with the six players?

Mind you, I probably didn't write to The Sunday Telegraph in response to a piece Nigel had published on November 30, seeing as I got a reply from Dominic Lawson on 11 November.

It's a shame that the Chess Café Bulletin Board no longer seems traceable, as I can't see whether or not I replied to Nigel's posting quoted in the chessgames.com link. It goes almost without saying that the case he makes is no case at all.

482-16 I wonder, in relation to Nigel Short's own attempts at "defending the indefensible", if he has any professional understanding of psychiatric illness, or any personal experience of it affecting anybody close to him. If he has - or for that matter, if he has not - he might reflect that it is not a matter concerning which cheap comments should be bandied about, nor one about which simple assumptions should be made. Short's discussion of Tony Miles fails these tests, and others besides.

I am not sure what Short thinks he is revealing in going through a long list of Miles' psychiatric episodes and personal defects. All of these instances - and others besides - are well-known. They were widely discussed before and after Miles' death. Nor is it a revelation that Miles both disliked Short and resented his success (any more than it is a revelation that Short both dislikes Miles and resents his popularity). But Short does not and cannot connect the two as he would like. What does he know of the roots of Tony Miles' illness? Psychiatric illness is a deep-rooted and intractable thing. All of us experience jealousy, but very few of us suddenly develop delusions that Ray Keene is trying to kill us, or (as is recorded in Genna Sosonko's appreciation) mistake the same gentleman for a sandwich. Who can know what chemical imbalances in Tony Miles' brain, what childhood experiences pushed him down the path to irrationality?

Experience suggests that consultant psychiatrists have enough difficulty in these matters, so I very much doubt that either Nigel Short or I can make confident assumptions on the question. Characteristically, though, Short does so - and he puts himself right at the centre of his answer. Indeed, he even writes that Miles was "insanely jealous" and that this was "an indication...of his descent into madness". To be jealous of someone indicates madness? What kind of talk is this? And this is the problem with Short's whole approach - he cannot (or prefers not to) distinguish the normal, if unattractive, human trait of jealousy from the extremely abnormal and unhappy phenomena that constitute, or accompany, psychiatric illness. But you must, if you are discuss a serious and sensitive question both sensitively and seriously. On the other hand, if all you are trying to do is throw stones, then you are under no such obligation. But could not Short find some better stones to throw?

Short also takes a lopsided approach to the omission of Miles' psychiatric history from Geoff Lawton's recent book. It is quite likely true that if it were included, it might produce a fuller portrait of the late grandmaster. (I have said so myself, in a forthcoming review.) But this doesn't make the book a hagiography, still less a conspiracy to suppress unhelpful evidence that might turn the public against a Miles falsely pained as a saint.